begins where language ends; it expresses thoughts and emotions, to which speech can give no utterance; it clothes words with a power which language cannot impart. Our favorite songs are set to music, because we are not satisfied with hearing them recited; we want to express more vividly the emotions which these words excite within us; and music alone will do it. Hence it is, that after hearing them sung, the words appear powerless if read in the common tone of voice.

Though it is probable, that vocal music preceded all other kinds, we still know that instruments for producing sound were very early invented. We are told, in Genesis, that Jubal was the father of all such as handle the harp and the organ.' Other references were also made to the cultivation of music in the first ages of the world. The first grand musical festival on record, however, occurred immediately after the passage of the Israelites across the Red Sea; nor can we conceive of a more sublime celebration. Standing on the shores of that wreck-strewed sea, whose waves rolled over the lifeless bodies of their enemies, and beholding in the distance the land of their bondage, they thought of the miracles which had been wrought for their deliverance; they remembered that, for them, the rivers had been changed into blood; for them, the country had been desolated, the people tortured with baleful reptiles, and thick darkness had rested on the land; for them, the waters of the sea had been piled up as a wall, on their right hand and on their left; they remembered, that they were free, and the desert rang with their triumphant anthems. The account is given with that simple grandeur which characterizes the writings of Moses. Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the Lord, and spake, saying I will sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea. Thy right hand, O Lord, hath dashed in pieces the enemy. With the blast of thy nostrils the waters were gathered together, the floods stood upright, as an heap, and the depths were congealed in the heart of the sea. The enemy said I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil; my lust shall be satisfied on them; I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them. Thou didst blow with thy wind; the sea covered them; they sank as lead in the mighty waters. And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her, with timbrels and with dances. And Miriam answered them Sing ye to the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea.'

The Jews were a highly musical people; they added this charm to all their celebrations, domestic, civil, and religious; they sang at their nuptial feasts, at the inauguration of their kings,

and on birth-day festivals. The returning conqueror was welcomed with songs, and the wearisomeness of the long march was relieved by this pleasing recreation. In the temple, the music was performed by the Levites; they were four thousand in number, and were divided, by king David, into twenty-four classes, each of which performed the music of the temple for one week at a time. They accompanied their songs by the different instruments which were then in use, excepting the silver trumpets, which were employed by the priests alone, and were used to summon the people, to make known the festal days, to direct the order of march, and to sound the alarm.

The most ancient musical instrument appears to have been the harp. Among the Hebrews, it had four, eight, or ten strings. With this number, it is not probable that very complicated music was produced; but the instrument was undoubtedly used chiefly as an accompaniment to the voice. They also used another stringed instrument, of a triangular form. It was covered with parchment, drawn tight over both sides, so as to produce reverberation, like the guitar or violin. Over this, were drawn the strings, six, nine, or ten in number. This instrument is supposed to be alluded in the Scriptures as the psaltery. The wind instruments were pipes- either single, or several joined together trumpets and horns: the organ, as understood in the Bible, was nothing more than a simple pipe, perhaps pierced, like our clarionet, to produce different notes. We find that, till very recently, the word retained the same signification in Englishthe instrument which now bears the name, being always mentioned in the plural number, so that we spoke of playing the organs, not the organ. The timbrel appears to have been much such an instrument as our tambourine-being composed of a circular frame, of wood or brass, hung round with small bells, and a piece of parchment stretched over it. This instrument was used by the dancers to accompany their steps. Finally, the Jews made use of cymbals, much like our own, and another kind not unlike the Spanish castanets, four in number, which were worn on the thumb and middle finger of each hand, to beat time in dancing.

The Greeks were great lovers of music. Their instruments were not unlike those of the Jews. Their principal and most ancient one, was the harp; besides which, they used the pipe, trumpet, and flute; and we may reasonably suppose, that music was carried to a high degree of perfection among a people remarkable for their exquisite taste, and speaking a language which, for melodiousness, has never been matched. I suppose their ordinary singing to have been somewhat like that of the Italian peasants of the present day; and there certainly is no popular

music so delighful as this. Returning home in crowds from their labors, or wandering by midnight through the streets of their cities, they invariably join in the full chorus: they are untaught, but their taste is so correct, and their voices so fine, that they are able to sing in perfect time, and produce rich harmony and the traveler, from some less genial climate, aroused from his slumbers by this midnight chorus, which, in the pure, still nights of Italy, seems to fill the air, almost fancies that he has listened to tones from a better world.

The Greeks possessed even greater natural advantages that the modern Italians. Their taste for the fine arts is without any rival; and the clear and mild atmosphere of their country undoubtedly rendered their voices superior to those of any modern civilized nation. They began very early, however, to reduce music to a regular science. In 546, B. C., Casus wrote a treatise on the theory of music; and Pythagoras investigated the mathematical relations of tones. The division of the scale, as explained by Vitruvius, is somewhat intricate; it consisted of two octaves and a half; but these octaves, however, contained only half the compass of our own — - as the Greeks appear to have used half-notes and quarter-tones, where we employ the whole and semitones. As there is much uncertainty still, respecting the signification of their terms, it is not worth our while to go into the detail upon this point. It is worthy of remark, however, that the Greeks had so cultivated music, that their language was employed in the science exclusively, and seems to have been as intimately connected with it, as Italian is at the present day. Vitruvius remarks, that, harmony is a difficult musical science, but most difficult to those who are unacquainted with the Greek language, because it is necessary to use many Greek words, to which there are no corresponding ones in the Latin.'

The Greeks evinced considerable knowledge of harmony, in an expedient to which they resorted for aiding the voices of their actors. Their theatres were very large, and open above, so that it was almost impossible for the voice, unaided, to fill them: numerous musical instruments, somewhat resembling a bell in shape and tone, were therefore suspended around the interior of the theatre, at regular intervals, in such a manner that their focus was in the middle of the stage: they were made to chord with each other; and the actor's voice, falling equally on all, reverberated in clear and unbroken tones. Another use made of musical tones, by the Greeks, was in their military engines. The Catapulta was a machine for throwing arrows and stones. A thick plank, of some elastic wood, having one end firmly fixed, was bent back by means of numerous cords, which being suddenly loosed, the

plank returned violently to its original position, and discharged the missile with great force. The accuracy of the aim depended upon drawing with equal force each cord by which the plank was bent back; and, in order to be certain of this, they struck the cords when in a state of tension, and determined, by the musical tone it returned, whether it were drawn tight enough or not.

6

In closing our remarks upon Greek music, we cannot forbear citing a very pleasant writer, in the Edinburgh Review, upon the subject: Greece,' says he, was, without exaggeration, the land of minstrelsy. It is not to a few great names and splendid exhibitions, to temples and theatres and national assemblies, that we need appeal for the proof of this assertion. View her people in their domestic occupations, their hours of labor and refreshment; peep into their houses, their work-shops, their taverns; survey their farms, their vineyards, their gardens: from all, arises an universal sound of melody. The Greek weaver sang at his loom, the reapers sang in the field, the water-drawers at the well; the women, grinding at the mill,' beguiled their toils with song. On board ship, was heard one kind of strains; around the winepress, peeled another. The shepherd had his own peculiar stave the oxherd, rejoicing in ballads more suited to horned bestial the godlike swineherd disdained to be outdone. Greek nurses, like other nurses, soothed fretful infancy with lullabies : Greek bathing-men were given to be musical. At bed and board, in grief, in love, in battle, in festivity, walking, running, swinging, sitting or recumbent, still they sang. Young men and maidens, old women and children, woke the untiring echoes. Beggars asked for alms, in verse. No occasion, great or small, of a mortal career, was without its appropriate harmony. Marriage had its epithalamia, its soporific strains at midnight, its rousing strains in the morning; parturition had its hymns to Diana; death itself was forced to drop the curtain to soft music.'

In Italy, music had made some advances before the time of the Romans. On this subject, an American writer makes the following remarks. 'We cannot doubt of the existence of music in Italy antecedently to the time of the Romans; although no treatise has been handed down to us, on the subject, written in the Oscan or Etruscan language. When we bear in mind the number and splendor of the cities, possessed by the latter of these nations, the luxury of their inhabitants, the skill of the artists, particularly in the plastic art, and in the fabrication of those vases denominated Etruscan, which equal, in point of beauty, the famous Murrhine vases - when we cast our eyes on Capua, which was called Caput Urbium, from the circumstance of its being the first of the Etruscan colonies on Pozzuoli, whose immense amphitheatre has survived the ravages of time, and served as a

model of the famous Coliseum of Flavianus-on Naples and Cumae, the most ancient of all their cities-can we for a moment believe, that in such a country, in other words, in all the southwest districts of Italy, the musical art alone should not have been carried to the highest degree of perfection?' The Romans borrowed songs and musical instruments from this nation and from Greece; and they employed music on the same occasions as these two; but especially for religious ceremonies and in war. The flute was used on the stage to sustain the voice of the actor ; and it is supposed that the great orators employed a musician for the same purpose, when they addressed the people in the forum. It was not until the time of the emperors, however, that music reached its perfection among them. In the age of Augustus, (as we are told) the magnificent hymn, written by Horace, in honor of Apollo and Diana, which has been preserved to our day, was set to music and sung by two choirs, alternately one composed of females, the other of young men from the best families in Rome. Under the succeeding Emperors, the art was cultivated with great care; the instruments used were nearly the same as those of Greece, and it is probable that they were extremely good. One of them has been preserved uninjured, to our own time. This instrument, which is the origin of the trombone, one of the most important pieces in modern bands, was dug up recently in Pompeii, where it had been buried for nearly two thousand years, and was presented by the King of Naples to the Emperor of Austria: the lower part is of bronze, and the upper half, with the mouth-piece, of pure gold. The tones of this instrument are so fine, that modern art has never been able to equal them.

The Emperor Nero excelled in playing on the harp; and his reign may be considered the golden age of classic music. But, the art was solemnly proscribed at Rome after his death, for it was too painfully associated with his crimes; it reminded the people of a tyrant, who delighted in blood - the murderer of his venerable preceptor, of his brother and his mother and both his wives; it reminded them of the monster, who set fire to the city, and, during the nine days' conflagration, sang to his harp of the burning of Troy. This epoch may be regarded as the close of 'Ancient Music.' It was received into the Christian church after this, and there developed with a power which was unknown to antiquity.

Two buildings, on distant and opposite hills, in Rome, seem to record these facts: on one hand, is seen a bleak, weatherworn tower, rising in lonely grandeur amid the ruins of the past. On this tower, Nero is said to have stood, enjoying the awful fire he had occasioned, and exulting, with harp and song, over